Brace for the Obamunami

Even if Sarah Palin wipes the floor with Joe Biden’s hair plugs tonight, the political tide seems to be turning decisively against the GOP here in Colorado, judging from a flurry of recent stories about voter registration trends.

In story after story after story we learn that there’s been a significant surge in voter registration -- a surge that heavily favors Democrats. Left-wing celebrities are venturing out into "flyover country," including pivotal Colorado, to boost registration among impressionable college students. Obamanistas are even having a voter registration pub crawl in Boulder, helping ensure he'll get the beer-guzzler vote

Now, we’re told by experts that many of the newly-registered don’t actually show up to vote. We're also reassured, by Republican politicos whistling past the graveyard, that this remains a solidly red state, statistically speaking. But even if half the newly-registered show up election day, the GOP seems in serious trouble. Palin's star status seems to be fading far faster than Obama's is, barring an electrifying performance tonight.

For all the talk about debates, and the candidate's positioning, and how 11th hour developments like the economic crisis could suddenly shake things up, politics is still a numbers game. And the numbers just don‘t look good for the GOP. If there’s no significant game-changer, I predict that Obama will carry Colorado -- decisively.

AP's Wasilla-gate Story Makes Mountains of Molehills

Intrepid reporters from the Associated Press have been turning over every rock and rowboat in Alaska, digging for dirt on Sarah Palin, and they've come home with several huge scoops. It turns out she was a college-hopper, attending six different schools in three different states before finally getting a degree, according to the results of one investigation. And now comes a second bombshell, suggesting that Palin may have acted unethically as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, by getting special zoning dispensations and receiving a free facial, free flowers and a free salmon. She also may have had a conflict of interest in voting on matters pertaining to snowmobiles, since her husband, Todd, races them.

Woodward and Bernstein, eat your hearts out.

But read the story. The situations described therein seem less symptomatic of small town corruption than emblematic of small town informality -- something that may seem alien to AP reporters from the big city, but won't be to most Americans. The rigidity and regimentation of big city life in the lower 48 isn't the norm in such places. Rules are meant to bend with real-world circumstances. Familiarity and proximity instead serve as checks on bad behavior or abuses of power. Neighborly gestures, including the giving of gifts, aren't automatically construed as bribes or inducements. And, yes, someone in a position of power may get some minor perks as a result -- though this happens to elected officials at every level of government, and doesn't necessarily breed corruption.

A reasonable person -- which a Pulitzer-hunting reporter isn't -- will not read dark motives or machinations into the "revelations" presented in the story. Zoning variances are granted all the time -- as they should be, since most zoning laws are ridiculous and unjust. And a mayor is as entitled to get one as anyone else. As well, politicians from the federal level on down routinely vote on tax measures that potentially benefit them or their family members: Is the AP suggesting that all such votes are tainted by self-interest, or that all those who are taxed must recuse themselves from such votes? That, too, is silly.

The AP obviously is expending a lot of effort and money scouring Alaska for material damaging to Palin. But the results of this "investigation" seem a poor return on the investment, and it seems as though the news service is straining to produce stories by turning molehills into mountains. Some media scrutiny and scrubbing is to be expected for anyone on the presidential ticket. But is the news service an equal opportunity investigator? Have teams of AP reporters been dispatched to Chicago, to probe Barack Obama's past in Chicago machine politics? I doubt it. Has a reporting team been dispatched to Delaware, to see if Joe Biden ever got comped a crab cake? I'm guessing not.

The AP went moose hunting in Alaska but bagged a field mouse instead. What's really been exposed by its Wasilla-gate stories is the bias and silliness of its reporters and editors.

McCain Makes a Play for the College-Hopper Vote

In their search for dirt on Sarah Palin, the intrepid reporters of the AP have landed a Pulitzer-worthy scoop. She reportedly attended six different colleges, in three different states, in six years -- a fact that wasn't disclosed on her official governor's office biography!

When will politicians learn? It's not the college-hopping that kills you; it's the cover-up.

Palin's grades are shielded by pesky privacy laws, but one can imagine, given her obvious lack of stability in those years, that she was no Rhodes Scholar. And can't you just wait for the vice presidential debate zingers Joe Biden's brains are scribbling on cue cards, to be dropped on her, like an anvil, at just the right moment? "I guess it's not surprising that you've changed your position on earmarks, Governor," he'll quip, "given your repeated flip-flops on a choice of college." Or how about this one? "Do Americans really want someone with her finger on the nuclear button," Biden will ask, looking gravely into the camera, his hair plugs glistening with flop sweat, "who can't even make up her mind about what college to attend?"

It will bring the house down. She'll be crushed. Lloyd Benson (if he's still alive) will cable his congratulations, for the second greatest cut down in modern debating history.

But wait: Maybe this reaffirms the diabolical brilliance of McCain's choice. There must be millions of Americans who changed schools (I did) and feel guilty about it (I certainly do). Some of them more than once. They'll relate to Palin as a kindred spirit. They'll know that she feels their pain, and knows their secret shame. Putting another college-hopper in the White House is a chance for respect, and for redemption, and they'll line up en mass behind the McCain-Palin ticket?

Whether the college-hopper vote can overcome the community organizer vote, only time will tell. But this college-hopper's vote is going to the McCain-Palin ticket.

Disunity over unions

Most of the images and words flowing out of Denver this week have been predictable, even boring. But one story stood out from the rest, in terms of what it potentially means for the future of American education.

The Rocky Mountain News reported Monday that a divorce may be in the offing between some Democrats and the teachers’ unions, whose marriage has been among the most stable in modern American politics. At an event at the Denver Art Museum on the day before delegates began trying to unify behind a single candidate and a coherent message, there was disunity over unions, with some in the party saying they've become a major impediment to improvement and innovation in public education.

Here’s how The Rocky reported it:

"An eclectic mix of Democratic wunderkinds, tough-talking education reformers and one elder statesman - former Gov. Roy Romer - are challenging their party to step away from teachers unions and return to fighting for the educational rights of poor and minority children.

"It is a battle for the heart of the Democratic Party," said Corey Booker, the 39-year-old rising star mayor of Newark, N.J. "We have been wrong in education," Booker said of his party and its alliances with teachers unions that put adults before children. "It's time to get right."

Booker was among those who appeared Sunday at the Denver Art Museum to challenge the Democratic Party to reconsider its course on education.

In references sometimes veiled and sometimes blunt, they tackled the party's often- cozy relationship with the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, which typically support - financially and otherwise - Democratic candidates.

"The Democratic Party is supposed to look out for poor and minority kids," said Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. "That's not the dynamic today," said Rhee, who is battling her city's union over a plan to overhaul teacher pay.

The rousing rhetoric shocked John Wilson, executive director of the NEA. "I was absolutely stunned at the level of union-bashing," Wilson said. "I think leaders who wish to provide a vision and a plan for improving our schools undermine themselves by alienating the teachers . . . who have to carry out that plan."

Those behind the "Ed Challenge for Change" aren’t proposing anything too radical, in my view. The plan, reports The Rocky, includes universal access to preschool, extended school days and school years and – here’s where they run afoul of anti-school choice teachers’ unions – more access to charter schools. But that’s the point: The unions are so reflexively opposed to almost any change or reform, and so vicious in attacking those who do support change, that they are now even alienating erstwhile allies.

Not a good sign for a party seeking unity, perhaps. But for Americans who rank better education as a top national priority, and for teachers who don’t walk in lockstep with unions on politics and policy, this rift can only be seen as a hopeful and welcome development.

Noting the oddity of seeing union-bashing at a DNC, one fellow blogger asked, "Isn't this one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse"?